Greece and Babylon

A COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF MESOPOTAMIAN, ANATOLIAN AND HELLENIC RELIGIONS
BY LEWIS R. FARNELL, D.Litt., M.A. FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD AUTHOR OF “CULTS OF THE GREEK STATES,” “EVOLUTION OF RELIGION,” “HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION” (HIBBERT LECTURES)
Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 1911
Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
TO Dr. HENRY WILDE THE FOUNDER OF THE WILDE LECTURESHIP IN NATURAL AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD THESE FIRST-FRUITS OF HIS ENDOWMENT ARE DEDICATED BY THE FIRST WILDE LECTURER
Exeter College, Oxford,
November 1911.
Indebtedness of primitive Greek religion to Mesopotamian influences—Various kinds of evidence to be considered: Texts and Monuments of Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, Hittite Kingdom, Asia-Minor coast, Minoan-Mycenaean area—Necessity of determining when the North-Aryan tribes entered Greece, and what they brought with them—Influences from Mesopotamia on Greece of the second millennium at least not direct—Precariousness of theory of religious borrowing—Special lines that the inquiry will pursue
Distinction between nature religions and ethical religions unsound—The degree of personality in the cult-objects a better criterion—The earliest system known in Mesopotamia a polytheism with personal deities, but containing certain products of animism and polydaimonism—Other Semitic and non-Semitic peoples of Asia Minor, the Minoan-Mycenaean races, the earliest Greek tribes, already on the plane of personal theism in the second millennium B.C.
Mesopotamian religious conception generally anthropomorphic, but the anthropomorphism “unstable”—Theriomorphic features, especially of daimoniac powers—Mystic imagination often theriomorphic—Individuality of deities sometimes indistinct—Female and male sometimes fused—The person becomes the Word—Similar phenomena in other Semitic peoples—Theriolatry more prominent in Hittite religion, though anthropomorphism the prevalent idea—The Minoan-Mycenaean religion also mainly anthropomorphic—The evidence of theriolatry often misinterpreted—The proto-Hellenic religion partly theriomorphic—Some traces of theriolatry even in later period, in spite of strong bias towards anthropomorphism